The first book in a provocative new series from acclaimed author Donna Freitas—Feed for a new generation.

Humanity is split into the App World and the Real World—an extravagant virtual world for the wealthy and a dying physical world for the poor. Years ago, Skylar Cruz’s family sent her to the App World for a chance at a better life.

Now Skye is a nobody, a virtual sixteen-year-old girl without any glamorous effects or expensive downloads to make her stand out in the App World. Yet none of that matters to Skye. All she wants is a chance to unplug and see her mother and sister again.

But when the borders between worlds suddenly close, Skye loses that chance. Desperate to reach her family, Skye risks everything to get back to the physical world. Once she arrives, however, she discovers a much larger, darker reality than the one she remembers.

In the tradition of M. T. Anderson’s Feed and Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies, Unplugged kicks off a thrilling and timely sci-fi series for teens from an award-winning writer.

Hi guys, and welcome to our tour stop for Unplugged. A unique scifi that exceeded my expectations. Keep reading to find out my thoughts on it and enter the giveaway!

review

Oh gosh you guys, I have been looking for a really good science fiction book since I read (and loved) The Body Institute by Carol Riggs last year. I was definitely interested in Unplugged before I got the email about the blog tour, but when I got the email that I was going to be part of the blog tour, the excitement only increased. I am so happy to say that yes, I did enjoy this book and it did exceed my expectations.

I loved Skye. I loved that she was so willing to risk everything in order to see her mom & sister again. I know for an absolute fact that I would have done the same thing, consequences be damned. She didn’t know what the real world would look like, but she didn’t let that affect her desire to see her family again. Some people may think her actions were stupid and not well thought out, but not me. Her actions made sense to me.

I was really happy that there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on romance. I think putting any more romance in the book would have killed it for me. Fair warning, there is a bit of a love triangle in the book, but since romance is not heavily featured, it wasn’t an issue for me.

The pacing was a bit of an issue for me though. For the most part, it was paced well, but every once and awhile, things would speed up when there was really no need for them to speed up. Also, some parts of the book dragged for me. Like the book didn’t need to be so long, but because there were some slower paced parts, that’s why it was such a long book.

book information

author information

Donna Freitas is the author of both fiction and nonfiction, and she lectures at universities across the United States on her work about college students, most recently at Colby, Pepperdine, Harvard, and Yale. Over the years, she has written for national newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post, and she’s currently a non-resident research associate at the Center for Religion and Society at Notre Dame. Donna has been a professor at Boston University in the Department of Religion and also at Hofstra University in their Honors College.

In 2008, Donna published Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on America’s College Campuses with Oxford University Press, based on her national study about sex on campus. Her latest book is called The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost (Oxford, October 2016), and it is based on her research for a new study about social media and how it is effecting the ways we construct identity and sense of self, how we make meaning in the world, and navigate our relationships during college. In 2014 and 2015, Freitas conducted approximately 200 in-person interviews with college students at thirteen different colleges and universities, and collected nearly1000 online surveys about these subjects.

Donna is also the author of six novels for children and young adults, including The Survival Kit (FSG, 2011), named an ALA Best Books for Young Adults and the winner of the Bookstar Award in Switzerland, and This Gorgeous Game (FSG, 2010), also named an ALA Best Books for Young Adults, a winner of the CCBC Choice Award, and a Chicago Public Library Best of the Best winner. Her novel, The Possibilities of Sainthood (FSG, 2008), received five starred reviews and many accolades, including: an Indie Next Kids’ List Great Read, Society of School Librarians International Book Award Honor Book, VOYA Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers, and the Texas Lone Star Reading List. Donna has also published two middle grade companion novels with Scholastic, Gold Medal Summer (about a gymnast) and Gold Medal Winter (about an ice skater), which just won a CCBC Choice Award. In June, Unplugged the first novel in her sci-fi trilogy about two competing worlds, one real, one virtual, will be out in June from HarperTeen. She lives in Brooklyn.